


Surrogate

by Azzandra



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Violence, kink meme fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 16,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which all of Gamzee's complicated relationships, with his lusus, with sopor and with Karkat, come to a head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asuka Kureru (Askerian)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/gifts).



> Fill for a prompt on the kink meme: 
> 
>  
> 
> _This glorious creeptastic gorgeously alien headcanon as to how and why lusii happen: http://isozyme.tumblr.com/post/31308618146/free-biologist-services-lusii_
> 
>  
> 
> _Basically lusii are mind-controlled by parasites into caring for troll wigglers because the parasites are in a symbiotic relationship with the Mother Grub._
> 
>  
> 
> _What I want to see the most, though, is the implication of a TROLL being affected by the lusus fluke: "Personal headcanon time: almost all adult trolls are immune to fluke infection, but every now again habitual cannibalism catches up with them and an adult troll will catch the lusus-bug. They go all white and get fiercely protective of whatever trolls are in their squadron._
> 
>  
> 
> _There’s a lot of good folk legends about ghost berserkers in enemy territory. The fluke never gets the right signals to molt into its adult form, so they linger."_
> 
>  
> 
> _..._
> 
>  
> 
> _Basically, anything at all involving that headcanon and its effect on trolls, troll society, legends, whatever._  
> 

_You swam for a long time._  
  
 _You swam until you forgot where you came from, or where you were going. You swam until fatigue settled so deep in your bones that you stopped feeling it anymore. Sometimes you ate, and sometimes you rested, but you couldn't do either for long without panic seizing you. You were compelled to keep moving towards your goal, even though you didn't know what that goal was. Every momentary delay sent pangs of alarm through your body, until you started moving again._  
  
 _That sense of urgency was all you had to guide you, and perhaps if it hadn't been so strong, you would have noticed that you were swimming in circles for days and nights on end._  
  
 _But you kept swimming, on and on and on, until you could swim no longer._  
  
 _And after you no longer had the strength to swim, or move, or fight the current, you sank into the dreamless sleep of exhaustion, near enough to death that your compulsion no longer had a hold._  
  
 _When you woke up, your face was pressed against sand._  
  
 _You dragged yourself up, even though it felt like someone had poured fire through your limbs. You looked around, and then you listened._  
  
 _For the first time, something like a destination formed in your mind, and a goal seemed within reach. You sobbed with relief as you limped your way across the beach, closer to a sound that called out to the deepest parts of your soul._  
  
 _You could hear it clearly; the curses that rang above the sound of the ocean until the voice that formed them broke, over and over._  
  
 _You were going to fix everything. This was what you were there for._  
  
 _Shh, everything's fine now, you kept thinking. In your mind you weren't sure who you were talking to, but you seized onto that thought. Everything's fine now, everything's fine now._  
  
*  
  
It starts on a bad night, when the sopor is too thin and your lusus too long gone.  
  
The smothering warmth of chemically-induced serenity recedes too far, and like the tides revealing a shipwreck, it leaves all the jagged, broken bits inside you exposed. You feel raw and empty and you spend the night crying, shaking and screaming at the ocean.   
  
You scare yourself when you're like this, and you eat your next pie while it's still hot, burning your fingers and tongue. You don't feel it. Everything has been inverted; the acuity of your senses has been transferred to your usually numb emotions, and you're overstimulated.  
  
You pace the beach, gripping a juggling club like a lifeline. You squeeze it to your chest like a beloved grubhood toy one minute, and the next, you look at it without comprehending what it is. When the sopor softness settles in your thinkpan and rolls down your body through every nerve ending, you stumble your way back to your hive.  
  
You don't remember reaching it, but you wake up in your recuperacoon. The sopor is low, almost too low to sleep in, but you still sleep.  
  
When you wake up the next night and climb out of the recuperacoon, you're struck by a sudden feeling of estrangement, like you are in some new and unfamiliar place. You're fairly sure you're still in your respiteblock, because there are images of clowns grinning down at you from the walls, and the glow of your husktop's screen giving everything a familiar blueish sheen, but it takes you a few moments for your thinkpan to catch up with your eyes on account of all those fuzzy sleepy miracles rattling around inside your spongecase slowing everything inside.  
  
The empty pie tins on the table are stacked neatly, and clean of any crumbs. You sort of have a blurry memory of licking a tin round and round, though you don't recall more than a few seconds before or after. But it looks like someone up and cleaned your respiteblock up, stacking all the horns in a corner. You don't think you've ever seen this much of your floor at a time, but even this novelty isn't enough to overtake the feeling of confusion.  
  
You can't sort the mess inside your 'pan well enough to find any moment in time when you might have decided to clean up your respiteblock. Admittedly, your sense of time isn't the best if you had to choose between yours and a broken time management device, and sometimes when you recall things, you don't remember what order they happened in, like each memory is a little bead that snapped off a necklace and fell to the ground, bouncing in every which direction.  
  
But you're staring at all these beads now, and you're counting 'em, and you're putting them back on the string in whatever order you think might make sense so's they make a pretty pattern, but now you've got this one extra bead, and it's also the wrong size and the wrong color and doesn't fit anywhere, and well...  
  
It's a pretty bead, but doesn't feel like it's yours. Feels like it's from someone else's necklace, except there's not anybody around who would have lost a bead, so it has to be yours, you think. And anyway, it's a pretty bead, you don't get beads like these often and...  
  
What were you thinking about?  
  
You can't think on an empty stomach. Or on a clear head, either.  
  
You bake a pie for breakfast and eat it slowly. You check the slime level in your 'coon, and you eat slower, and you only take a teensy bit out for lunch. You need to remember not to eat a lot until your next ration comes in.  
  
You distract yourself by talking to your friends. You have a rap battle with Tavros, you talk with Karkat... It feels alright, it feels like you can make it to the next supply drop. You forgot last time, ended up staring at a wall for too long and missed it, but you told Karkat to remind you this time, and if you hang out online with him, you know he'll remember for you. You know he'll tell you to go and collect your supplies. He'll scream and swear and rant, but he'll go and pick them up himself if he thinks he has to.  
  
And if he also starts thinking that you warrant keeping a closer eye on you, well... Karkat needs to take care of people, and you don't all mind if 'people' mainly means you. The brother needs a calming influence in his life, before his horns start sizzling like overheated candy in a radiation-based heating apparatus.  
  
You finish your two pies and bake another before you remember you should be rationing, but by that point there's no use wasting this nice extra pie, and you eat it before the hum of anxiety in your horns starts moving any lower.   
  
You pretend that you have enough sopor left in your recuperacoon, but maybe you're kinda shit at pretending, because you're surprised as hell when you wake up the next night as well-rested as you do.  
  
*  
  
You wake up with the sharp smell of fresh sopor.  
  
Slowly, you climb out of your recuperacoon and take a long, hard look at its contents. These are not the watery dregs from the night before. This is fresh sopor, so fresh that it stings your ganderbulbs, and it's more than you usually have.  
  
Your frail grasp on the natural progression of events is broken as you scramble to find days and nights you know must be missing. When you come up only with an unbroken thread between going to sleep in the paltry remains of your sopor supply and waking up surrounded by such a cornucopia, you sit down on the floor and quietly attempt a panic attack.  
  
You're still addled by sopor, or maybe just a bit too relieved, because you can barely scrounge a few stray flecks of concern.  
  
You bake yourself a pie, and by the time you're a quarter way through it, your concern has melted away into comforting puddles of complacency. You sit down at your husktop, and your night continues to go well, because your best friend is online. You troll him with nothing more to your intentions than wanting to talk, but you still have this niggling curiosity—no longer tinged with worry—about how much time you're missing.  
  
TC: bRo, If YoU dOn'T mInD a MoThErFuCkEr GeTtInG hIs QuErYmAkInG aLl Up In YoUr DiReCtIoN  
TC: hOw LoNg SiNcE yOu AnD mE dOnE mAdE aNy SoRtA tAlKiNg NoIsEs Up At EaCh AnOtHeR?  
CG: YOU'RE ASKING HOW LONG SINCE WE TALKED? I ASSUME YOU MEAN IN PERSON, BECAUSE I DOUBT EVEN YOU COULD FORGET WE TALKED JUST LAST NIGHT OVER TROLLIAN.  
CG: UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY DID FORGET THAT. WHICH, WHILE COMING FROM SOMEONE WHO ISN'T A PANFRIED CROTCHGOBLIN WITH THE MEMORY RETENSION CAPABILITY OF A GRUB DROPPED ON ITS HEAD ONE TOO MANY TIMES WOULD BE SURPRIZING, WOULD NOT EVEN REGISTER AS A BLIP ON THE CLOWNFACE ASSHOLE BIZARRITY GAUGE.  
TC: yOu KnOw Me DaMn BeSt, BrO. :o)  
CG: YES, WELL, IT'S KNOWLEDGE GAINED THROUGH SUFFERING THE INANE WORDVOMIT OF AN IRRESPONSIBLE DOUCHEFUCK WITH STUPID HAIR. I'VE COME TOO FAR TO GO BACK.  
TC: hOnK  
TC: sO wHaT dId We GeT oUr TaLkFlApS aLl AbOuT lAsT nIgHt?  
CG: OH DEAR GOD YOU ACTUALLY DID FORGET  
CG: LOOK, I PROMISED TO REMIND YOU THAT YOU NEED TO GO AND GET SUPPLIES AT THE NEXT DROP.  
CG: AND THIS IS ME REMINDING YOU.  
CG: NOT THAT YOU NEED TO GO, BUT THAT I PROMISED TO REMIND YOU, WHICH I WILL ALSO DO WHEN THE TIME COMES, BECAUSE I'M COMMITTED TO THIS EMBARRASSING FUCKING CIRCUS ACT SO I GUESS I HAVE TO SEE THINGS THROUGH NOW.  
  
He goes on to lecture you on the importance of stocking up, on how to take care of yourself, and a long tangent on why you need to brush your hair because it “FREAKS ME OUT, SERIOUSLY”. You sit there, contributing only the occasional honk to the conversation, but you don't really pay attention all that much. You just watch every line of text as it appears, walls and walls of gray concrete letters surrounding you like a fortress, and making you feel just as safe.  
  
Later, you make a few more pies, eat two, and go for a walk on the beach.  
  
You can feel all the miracles around you tonight, and you don't even feel a twinge of anything when you don't see your lusus.  
  
When you return, you're guided back to your hive by the long stretch of light extending from your door and across the beach. It doesn't even occur to you that you turned the light off before you left until you're already inside and see the nice, clean stack of pie tins on the counter.  
  
There's that distant feeling of reality not matching the world inside your thinkpan again, and you're still reeling when you feel arms going around you and something cold and clammy touching your cheek.  
  
The juggling club is in your hand in moment, and you throw your head back, trying to stab with your horns, but the moment you move, everything tightens. You are in a headlock, and a hand clamps down around your wrist, tight enough to make the club drop from your inert fingers.  
  
The hand is stark blinding white, and the voice in your ear whispers soothingly.  
  
The hand is white. The hand is  _white_.  
  
The calming haze of sopor parts like a curtain, and terror hits you like a railbound transit device to the face.


	2. Chapter 2

You can't escape ghosts, it's in every horror movie you've ever seen. You don't remember the plots or the characters in these movies, but blended together in your memories, there is always the image of a terrified wriggler chased relentlessly by a gaunt-faced apparition and always getting caught.  
  
Despite this, instinct propels you forward, and for a split second, you feel like you almost managed to tug yourself free of the monster's grasp. But you only manage to make the both of you fall to the ground, the weight of the ghost almost crushing you.  
  
You claw at the floor in your scramble for escape, but the ghost is indifferent to your struggles. It presses its weight down on you, making it harder to breathe and to move, and hisses in your ear things that sound almost like words.  
  
“Shh, quiet, quiet, e'rythin' fine now, shh...”  
  
It pats you on the head and presses down harder, so you can hardly even move.   
  
You keep struggling, but you're pathetically overpowered. You stop and try to catch your breath, wheezing, unable to get enough air. But you notice that, as you stop struggling, the ghost's grip lessens as well.   
  
“Safe now, keep you safe,” it hisses. It sounds almost sleepy.  
  
You sit there for a long time, waiting to see what happens. Nothing much does. The whispering stops after a while, and it doesn't feel like you're purposefully being held down anymore. Just feels like someone's taking a nap on top of you, like they just found you lying on the floor one night and decided you made for a cozy spot to take a nap, no matter that you're such a bony motherfucker. Some people like a firm, sharp surface to chill on, and you can't blame a troll for making themselves comfy.  
  
'Cept you kinda blame them when it's on top of you while you're aching all over.  
  
You wonder what'll happen if you move a tad bit. There's a sharp pain in your back, and you try to roll in a more comfortable position. You didn't expect to have as much give as you have, though, because you roll full on your side, and the ghost slumps off (maybe it really was asleep, who'd have figured that?), and then it loops an arm around you and pulls you closer to its chest.  
  
The grip is crushing at first, and you make a pained sound.  
  
“Shh, shh, you're safe, everything's fine,” it says, and its voice is starting to sound a bit firmer and louder, like it's been sitting unused so much time that it needs to go a few times around the lawnring until it works out all the kinks.  
  
It keeps telling you you're safe, and you know that's pretty much what all ghosts say in movies, too, except usually when they're haunting someone, their notion of keeping someone safe involves killing their moirail or slaughtering their lusus or locking them up and torturing them in all sorts of ways. You never heard of a ghost hugging someone to death, probably because it would make for a motherfucking weird movie.  
  
“It hurts,” you croak, still breathless and strangled by terror.  
  
“Not gonna hurt you, little one, shh.”  
  
It keeps saying that, but you'd rather test it out yourself.  
  
“Naw, I believe ya, motherfucker. Only but this floor's hard an' makes all sorta bruises on my hide, you follow?”  
  
There's a flat second of silence when you're waiting to see if your gamble worked that you consider praying to the Mirthful Messiahs. You think they might just think this situation is hilarious and let you deal with it by yourself, but the point's moot. The ghost moves quick as you like, jumping to its feet and dragging you up by the arms.  
  
You stagger to your feet, all the blood rushing to your head at the sudden motion, so you don't quite have a grasp of your surroundings right away. But you damn near yelp when your eyes fall on the monster before you.  
  
The shape is near enough to troll, even with a flare of ragged fins below its ears, like a seadweller proper usually has. But other than that, it doesn't resemble a troll anymore than a drawing on a flat sheet of paper after its colors been erased. White skin, matched with white, brittle hair hanging around its shoulders in knotted clumps. A face so gaunt, that the cheekbones are as sharp as knives and the eyes are as large as a bug's. There's no color in the iris, but instead of the dark gray of youth, whatever shade of purple was meant to be there is faded near to white.  
  
Its clothes are little more than rags, the colors as faded from them as from their owner. Maybe they were green or black or blue, but they're faded to white now, and the outline of the troll's symbol has been reduced to a few vague lines.  
  
The rest of its body is skinny and hard-worn. You see only the suggestion of breasts, which combined to the sharpness of the face, clues you in to a gender. But she's still a full grown troll, taller than you by heads and shoulders, and twice as wide. She might have been a lot more imposing in her own time, but what she's lost in bulk is more than made up for by the other changes in her appearance.  
  
She looks at you with an intensity you're too sober to withstand right now. You want to stuff your windhole with pie and crawl into your recuperacoon for half a perigee, except there's a voice that sounds a little bit like Karkat yelling at you that you have a problem and it isn't one of the problems what you can ignore until it goes away. You hate those other kinds of problems, and you selfishly wish Karkat was here to yell at it and make it go away.  
  
Knowing him, he'd probably do it, too. Little best bro can yell miracles into existence.  
  
You move a step back, and she moves a step forward. You make to turn, and she circles around you, putting herself between you and the door.  
  
You don't dare look in the direction of the other door, leading to the interior of your hive. You have the vague notion that if you come up with an escape plan, you shouldn't clue her in on it, even if the extent of your plan so far is 'pick a direction and run like a motherfucker with his pants on fire'.  
  
Her head swings from side to side like some great reptilian beast. She reached behind her and pulls the door closed.  
  
“There, now, are you hurt?” she asks, and comes right up to you, starts pawing at your face and chest. She grabs one arm and pulls it out to inspect it, pushes up your sleeve to your shoulder, then does the same with your other arm. She pokes at your elbow. “Does this hurt?”  
  
You hiss in pain because it does. You got a carpet rash on the back of your forearm and your elbow, the skin peeled off and indigo blood showing.  
  
She makes a horrid gurgling sound as she looks at it, sounding deeply displeased.  
  
You've sobered up some; between the tussle and the terror, your bloodpusher's been working hard and sending the sopor running faster through your veins, burning through it. There's no part of anything that's happening right now to you that feels any good, and you don't think the universe is done harshing on you hard.  
  
You're not even through thinking that, when the ghostlady leans down and slowly drags her tongue over your wound. You freeze at the sight of indigo on her tongue, on her lips. You don't unfreeze even when she does it again, licking a swathe over the rest of the scrapped skin.  
  
You don't understand what's going on, but it doesn't feel like your usual state of not understanding things. Seems right now that you could be the most straight-edge motherfucker in the solar system, and none of this shit would make any sense to you. You wonder seriously what the opposite of a miracle is, because that's what's up and happening all about you right now.  
  
She licks until her tongue stops coming back colored with your blood. It doesn't hurt, or anything, at most stings a bit, but you were already well past bugging out, and this is just a bit more freakiness than you can cope with.  
  
“There, all better, all better,” she says, like she's trying to reassure herself. She gives you this  _look_ , all pleading, like she's wanting for your approval.  
  
“Yeah, all motherfucking peachy,” you mumble, and she beams.  
  
Sorta. She's got the mechanics down, but it looks like she's trying to remember where all the muscles are supposed to be positioned to get the facial expression correct, so mostly she looks like one of those abyssal fishes with no lips and fangs jutting out every which way. But she's obviously putting a lot of effort into making this expression, so you smile back, if only so she'd think she's got it and stop.  
  
“Hurt anywhere else?” she asks, and light brushes her fingers over your hair. You flinch back, and she frowns.  
  
“No, I'm all up in my best shape what I can possibly be at,” you reply quickly.  
  
She stares at you blankly like people sometimes do when they're trying to decipher what you're saying. Karkat says you got a penchant for fucking syntax up the waste shoot without so much as an 'if you please'.  
  
“No, 'm fine,” you mumble.  
  
“Good, good,” she says with a firm nod, and grabs you once again, dragging you off to the other side of the room. You think to dig in your heels at first, but you saw how well it ended for you last time one of you was all about moving and the other standing still, and you think there's only so much being crushed into the floor you can stand for one night.  
  
She drags you towards the recuperacoon, oddly enough, and points at the sopor.  
  
“You see? You see this?” she asked, pointing. You nod, even though you're not sure what you're supposed to be seeing that special. “I got this for you, I got it all for you. You needed sopor, you deserve as much sopor as you need.”  
  
It seems obvious in retrospect, so much so that you feel incredibly stupid for not having asked yourself where the sopor up and came from, 'cause it sure didn't march in here by itself and jump into your 'coon out of sheer pity for your sorry condition.  
  
“But where did you get all that miraculous green stuff from at?” you ask.  
  
*  
  
 _Cabinet doors came loose off their hinges under your hands. No time for patience, no need for finesse. You had to find it, you had to find it quickly._  
  
You moved from room to room, tearing though the hive.  
  
You didn't even think about the hive's occupant until a gasp announced his presence to you.   
  
He was easy to kill, his skull cracking into splinters under your hands. Wrigglers at this age were so small and fragile. Your wriggler was small and fragile too, you needed to take such good care of him, you needed to make sure nobody touched him.   
  
Your hands were stained with green, and this reminded you of your task.  
  
You found packets of sopor concentrate in the kitchen, lying in clear sight on the table. You took all of them, stuffed them down your shirt and knotted the hem around you waist so they don't fall out. You had a split second recollection of when the shirt was snug against your body, and this thought made you pause for a moment.  
  
You couldn't recall when that would have been, though. You'd always been like this. You'd always been like this since meeting your precious little one, and there was nothing before you washed up on his beach.  
  
  
*  
  
She looks at you like she can't comprehend the question, even though you know you were relatively clearspoken by your standards.  
  
“I got it for you,” she says. “You needed sopor.”  
  
Then she coos and pets your hair, and you don't know what to say, because you know she's right. You needed sopor.


	3. Chapter 3

**CG: OKAY, WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH YOU TONIGHT?  
CG: I KNOW WAITING FOR A REPLY FROM YOU IS USUALLY MUCH LIKE PLAYING THE LOTTERY, IN THAT IT'S AN EXERCISE IN BOTH LUCK AND PERSISTENCE, BUT YOU SEEM TO BE MOVING EVEN FUCKING SLOWER THAN YOUR USUAL LANDMOLLUSK PACE.  
CG: IF I FIND OUT THAT YOU'RE TYPING SO SLOW BECAUSE YOU'RE BUSY TUGGING YOUR BULGE AT THE SAME TIME, I AM GOING TO PUKE UNTIL I TURN INSIDE OUT. PLEASE TELL ME THAT THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE GOING ON, LIKE YOU FIGHTING A SQUAD OF DRONES SINGLEHANDEDLY OR HAVING A SHITTY RAP-OFF WITH THE CONDESCE. **  
 **TC: aIn'T nO bIg ThInG, bRo.  
TC: JuSt SoMe StUfF gOiNg DoWn On My EnD.**  
 **CG: YEAH I KINDA FIGURED THERE WAS SOMETHING GOING ON, NOOKFILTH, I WAS ASKING WHAT THAT THING WAS, BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T USED ONE DUMBASS CLOWN NOSE EMOTICON ALL NIGHT AND I'M STARTING TO WORRY.**  
 **TC: dOn'T nEeD tO gEt YoUr WoRrY oN jUsT yEt I dOn'T tHiNk.  
TC: Be TaLkInG tO YoU aNoThEr TiMe ThOuGh, NoW's No GoOd FoR mE.**  
 **CG: BULLSHIT, YOU ALWAYS HAVE TIME TO TALK TO ME. WHAT THE HELL IS GOIN**  
  
terminallyCapricious [ **TC** ] is now offline!  
  
 **CG: GODDAMMIT GAMZEE**  
  
*  
  
She's sleeping curled up all around your feet and it's throwing you off something bad. You don't dare press the keys on your husktop too hard on account of the clickety-clacking waking her up.  
  
She's scary when she's awake, always just one step away from you. You go to another room, she follows. You sit down, she curls up right next to you. You go to the ablution block, she sits just outside the door and scratches like a clingy meowbeast to be let in. You've become right terrified of moving around your own hive since acquiring your second shadow.  
  
And it's not like she's been doing bad things, you don't think. Sometimes she does things that seem creepy and off-putting and you realize that in her twisted logic she thinks she's being helpful. She cooked you a meal, and then she went and had a fit because you didn't have the right kind of saucepan she needed. She cleaned your respiteblock, and then she went and moved all your shit around until you couldn't find anything anymore. Moving it all back made her hiss in distress and break down shaking.  
  
You could argue or try to stop her from doing all her freaky shit, but goddamn if she doesn't turn all pathetic and weepy when you don't let her do like she wants. She won't hurt you or nothing, other than by accident, when she doesn't judge her strength right (and she's a seadweller, and a damn old one, so even wasted away she's still strong as any highblooded motherfucker you're like to meet). But she'll keen, and whine, and look at you all sad-like, as if you'd done something to hurt her.  
  
You went to sleep early the other night, mostly because you wanted to escape her and running away was still not much of an option. She's freakishly fast when spurred into action.  
  
You woke up tonight with her lying in front of your recuperacoon. She was already awake, her large eyes glossy with the fervor you seem to inspire in her, and you had the uncomfortable thought that she stayed up all day staring at you.   
  
You washed, and changed and put on your facepaint, all while wondering what to do next. She's not leaving. You don't think anything short of a meteor would move her out of your hive. You can't go, either, because it's clear now that she'll follow you.  
  
So you ate some leftover pie and then you sat down at your husktop, intent on asking one of your friends for help. She curled up at your feet, touching you with her cold, clammy hands and nuzzling your soles enough that you can't manage to forget she's there. Maybe that's her intention. Or maybe she actually gets some kind of comfort from this situation.  
  
Either way, Karkat was online, and you talked to him.  
  
But you didn't ask for help. Mirthful Messiahs know you need it, but you can't ask.  
  
You've seen her claws, you've seen the crusted green blood under her nails. You want your friends' help more than anything, except for how much you want your friends not to get their fine selves killed. Who could you ask? Equius? He's one strong dude, but even you wouldn't pit him against an adult, and especially not a ghost.  
  
Or Karkat? Every part of your bloodpusher sings out for your best friend to come and sort all this out like it's one of his movies, but you'd want him to be in danger least of everyone you know.  
  
So you don't say a thing to any one of the motherfuckers you know. You don't tell Karkat what's wrong, and you sure as hell don't ask him to save you. He'd come swinging his sickle around like the badass half-pint threshecutioner that he thinks he is, and then he'd die like the nubby little wriggler he  _actually_  is.  
  
At least she's sleeping now, making you wonder if maybe she actually was up all day watching you sleep, and it isn't just some strange thought you had. Wouldn't be nearly the strangest thing in her repertoire, but damn if it isn't the thought that bothers you most. You're not sure if you're imagining it, if your thinkpan's just filling in the blanks for you, but you think that you can vaguely remember waking up once or twice in the day, and a cold hand was touching your brow.   
  
You feel filthy at the thought, and want to scrub your whole skinsuit off, 'til all that's left is raw muscle that her paws haven't touched yet.  
  
You slowly, inch by inch, pull your feet free. She doesn't wake up, which seems like the biggest miracle of you life so far, and you step away from her, careful not to make any noise. You're thankful, at least, that she cleaned up the horns. Stepping on one of those right now would be just in line with the universe's comedic timing, and you don't think you'd be the one laughing.  
  
You step out on the beach. It's a dreary night, overcast and cold. You forgot to put on shoes, so your feet are cold.  
  
You look from one end of the beach to the other and think. In one direction, there's Eridan's hive. You've only been there once, stumbled across it by accident one night when you got in the wandering mood. You could probably find your way back there again, though it's a crapshoot if Eridan feels like helping you. The brother gets in these moods that make you want to shove a pie down his gullet just so he'd stop bringing everybody else down with him.  
  
In the other direction, there's mostly nothing but cliffs and hostile seadwellers.  
  
To your right is the ocean, vast and uncaring and not a good place for anyone not having gills. To your left is the land, unforgiving to any wriggler wandering around without a lusus.   
  
It feels like you're surrounded in every direction, even though there's nothing but wide open spaces all around. You're a sad little troll on a beach, with a hive that feels like a cage, and no direction to go in that won't hurry him up on the way to stone cold dead.  
  
Who's left to turn to, your lusus?  
  
You look out at the ocean to confirm that he isn't here, that he has failed yet again like he fails you every night when he doesn't show up, but you're stumped to discover that the old goat has proved you wrong tonight.  
  
At first, you're sure that too much wishful thinking has made you see things, but as you blink and shake your head and take another look, you become convinced that you really are seeing your lusus on the horizon.  
  
You are running before you can even remember you've got feet, and make a mad dash for the water, screaming for your lusus. You're waist-high in water before you realize that he isn't coming your way. You're chest deep when you start sobbing, fat purplish tears streaming down and leaving streaks in your paint.  
  
You scratch the bottom of your foot on something, a seashell or a rock, and you don't notice until you start limping towards the shore. The salt stings, and you feel it, you know that you do, but you just don't care.   
  
You go back to your hive, trailing seawater everywhere. You pass the ghost troll still sleeping on the floor and you go into the food preparation block. You turn on the baking device, letting it heat up, and take out a stack of pie tins.  
  
When you turn around again, you see something out the corner of your eye and find two packets of sopor concentrate jammed behind a knife block.  
  
A packet of sopor concentrate lasts at least two week, even with your unusual usage.  
  
You tear open one of the packets and pour it out into a pie tin. Beautiful lime-green powder, sparkling in the light like a handful of stars.  
  
Your shoulders heave and you make a choked sound, but you don't figure out that it's because you're crying until everything blurs into indigo. You wipe a hand across your face; it comes away purple and white and gray, so you scrub at your face and ruin the rest of your paint in a fit of childish spite.  
  
You'll show him for leaving you here like this.


	4. Chapter 4

You're at the point where you're not sure if what you're feeling is agony or euphoria. Some tired lump of your spongematter is making noises at you like you should be knowing the difference, but all you can feel inside is a shifting turmoil.   
  
You feel like the ocean probably feels all the time. Yeah, that's exactly the kind of miracle you're feeling right now. You're just like the ocean, what has waves on the edges and seems like a serene motherfucker, always sitting in one place, but with all those currents, and all the motherfuckers swimming in it that the ocean is so chill about, like, hey, I know you peeps are all inside me and shit, but I'm cool with it, motherfuckers, look how cool I am. So all that water, all that ocean full of water, is standing still, but all its parts are moving at the same time, and that's why it looks like it's standing still.  
  
And you're standing still too, and all your insides feel like they're moving too, even though you're pretty sure you're on the floor right now, but you've got currents and waves too, and maybe some things swimming all up inside you, how about that shit? You're cool about that too, just like the ocean, if some dudes are all about living inside you and swimming around and shit, they ain't done you no harm yet and you're cool as long as they keep not doing you it.  
  
Everything's cool. You're just gonna sit here a while, just existing for a while. You don't even get all your surprise feeling on at how the ocean doesn't do much all day, because you're being the ocean right now and you can see how motherfucking exhausting it is. You can't believe your horns that you were ever doing anything other than this at the same time as other things. Where'd you get the energy to be all up and doing that? Did you ever go around walking and talking and all that shit? Was that you baking pies? Man, you didn't know motherfucking jack back then, always running around like that and not noticing all this tired you're feeling.   
  
And you thought you were a chill dude? You didn't even know how much more you needed to chill until now. You're gonna stay down here forever. You're gonna spend the rest of your life right here.  
  
There's nobody to bother you, nobody... except...  
  
You don't really understand what you're looking at, but that it's a moving pattern of gray and white and harsh outlines and it starts making an awful sound, high-pitched and piercing right through your skull like a knitting needle being hammered through your eye sockets.  
  
It throws everything inside you out of balance, makes everything hurt like when you're touching ice for so long that you don't feel the cold anymore.   
  
You want it to go away, but it won't, it gets closer, and it touches you, and moves you around, and that just jars you even worse. Feels like all the bad bits are sloshing around inside you. You want to make all this stop, make it go away. You recall that you can do something like that, but you don't remember how. You don't remember how all your bits work. One of those bits of you panics, because you know you should be able to move or talk, because you know you've done it before and it didn't seem so hard at the time... but that part's drowned out by everything else.   
  
You just feel bad now. You don't know if it's even pain or nausea or anxiety, you just know you don't like it a lot.  
  
Then you feel something else, and this is like something from outside you making its way in. There's dull pain in you throat, and then everything in your body becomes focused around the tension in your nutrition holding sack. In one convulsion, your body expels everything you've eaten. You feel it burning its way out, and in one unexpected moment of complete and utter lucidity, you realize you're puking your guts out into the load gaper.  
  
You can hear yourself whimper after the first bout of vomiting, and then after the second, and then as you retch without anything coming out. You hate this, you hate this so much, but afterward you feel better, like you puked up some of the pain and the bad feelings.   
  
You feel worn out, like a threadbare rag used to scrub too many stains.   
  
You slip to the floor and curl up in the pupal position while your innards roil. You're shaking. Maybe you're cold, but you're back at the point where you can't sort out the exact sensations you're experiencing.   
  
Water drips on your face, and then you feel your head being tilted upwards. The water gets in your mouth and you spit it out at first, but you manage to swallow some on the third or fourth try. Your eyes slit open and you glare at the indistinct shape that won't leave you alone. It's white, lusus-white, and you can't stand that color right now.   
  
All the colors are pretty, they're all amazing, and when they're a lot of them together it's the most panshattering miracle anyone could possibly witness, but not this one. This color is horrible, and you want to rip it out of the world, leave gaping voids in its place, and sew them closed until everybody forgets it was ever there.   
  
Your murky thoughts seamlessly shift to murky nightmares as you sink into fitful sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

You wake up over and over, but it's always day out, and you force yourself to go back to sleep. It feels like the day goes on forever, though, and every time you flinch awake, you're convinced that hours and hours must have passed and that night surely should have arrived already.  
  
You figure that it's because you're not sleeping in sopor. For some reason, you're in the horn pile, but you feel too wrecked to even drag yourself towards your recuperacoon, much less pull your sorry ass inside.  
  
A few times, you wake to cold hands on your face, and it startles you when you open your eyes and come face to face with the ghost, her huge eyes gleaming as she whispers soothing nothings. You resent her for it. Sometimes you wish she was your real lusus, and sometimes you wish Karkat was here instead of her. And sometimes you're in a fuzzy sort of middle ground when you wish she'd call Karkat, when you want to tell her to get on the husktop and hit up carcinoGeneticist and tell him to come over, and you think that she would—maybe—even do it.  
  
You try to tell her once or twice, but you always droop off again before you even get to the end of the sentence.   
  
So you sleep.  
  
*  
  
 _So he sleeps.  
  
He sleeps as deeply as the dead, and he is to still and small and defenseless, that you sit for a long time just listening to his breath and reassuring yourself.  
  
Poor little precious thing, of all the things you want to protect him from, now you have to shield him from himself? How can you even do this?   
  
You sit and think and gently brush his hair back. Paint is still smeared at the edges of his face.   
  
Then, after your decision is made, you go to the ablution chamber, pick up the cleaning supplies, and get to work.  
  
You gather all the pies in the hive, scrape them out of their tins and into a waste receptacle and then pour a whole bottle of floor cleaning fluid over them. The reaction that follows results in a yellowish-brown sludge that is unrecognizable as either sopor or any sort of cleaning substance.  
  
You clean out the recuperacoon, taking out sopor by the basinful and pouring it out into the ocean. After you are done, you take the recuperacoon outside, turn it inside out and scrub it until there is not a trace of sopor on it. Then you put it right back as it was.  
  
You pour out all the packets of sopor into the load gaper. You flush over and over, and then you clean the load gaper.  
  
You go through every cabinet, wardrobe, closet and cranny in the hive and you find an expired packet of sopor, two stale pies and a bottle of sopor thinner. You throw those out too.  
  
You return to your wriggler and watch him sleep for a long time. You pet his hair and peel old paint off his face and whisper kindness to him.  
  
It aches so much; you never knew you had it in you to hurt so much for someone else. It surprises you, and then you don't know why. You are _ supposed _to care for him. It's the only reason you are alive._  
  
 _You sleep for a while, curled around him on the horn pile, holding him close to feel his heartbeat. It soothes your mind somewhat, but you still worry, worry, worry. There is so much more you need to do. You mustn't fail him again._  
  
 _After a while, you get up and make another round of the hive, gathering every sharp object you come across._


	6. Chapter 6

When you finally get around to rousing yourself and trying to go about your business, you discover that in the upright position you have the sort of headache that feels like someone pried open your skull with their claws, replaced all your spongematter with sanding paper and then put everything back together by nailing the top of your head shut. There is not an inch of your spongecase that doesn't hurt.  
  
And you're also thirsty as hell.  
  
You make your way to the ablution block and make the mistake of turning on the light. You want to curse, but all that comes out is a hiss and a croak. You put your mouth right to the faucet and gulp down water like you've been wandering the desert your whole life. After that, you spend a lot of time putting your paint on, because your arms feel about as solid as a clump of seaweed and you can't lift them up for much at a time. You can't see very well in the dimness of the ablution block, but the diffuse green light coming through the window is just enough.  
  
You shuffle on out of the ablution block, with the water sloshing around inside you like you're a troll-sized bottle that's only quarter-full. You freeze in the doorway, because you see ghostlady rooting through your hornpile, and she turns her whole body to look at you with her oversized eyes. You forgot about her for a few blessed minutes, but now you've got knowledge of her coming back to knock about inside your thinkpan and it ain't half pleasant.  
  
“You were gone,” she says with a voice like a hundred sweeps of mourning. “Don't go like that again, don't disappear.”  
  
She gets up and comes all close and in your business, pats at your shoulders and your hair and your face, which you shy away from because you just put on your paint. She doesn't notice or maybe pretends not to care that you don't want her mitts all over you. She croons deep in her throat like she's got a rusty old box of rattle toys which she's shaking just for you.   
  
“You should eat,” she says, “you're so skinny, look at you,” and she gives you a fond smile, full of crooked yellow teeth.  
  
“Yeah, I'm feeling all those razor miracles digging up my insides outways,” you admit. You're feeling the corrosive pain of sopor withdrawal combined with a hunger that's leaving you lightheaded. You think you'll go right for the proper eats first instead of waiting for a pie to bake.  
  
She drags you to the food preparation block and sits you down with a plate of food. It's something light, a bunch of vegetables and some really lean meat lightly cooked and seasoned. It doesn't smell too strongly, which you think your digestive organs might take offense to right now, and it practically melts in your mouth.  
  
She hovers over you as you eat, passing condiments and poking at your vegetables  _very pointedly_  until you relent and taste some. They're not half bad. Nothing like the meat, but also nothing to act all ungrateful like over. You eat them all and you take to them better than the meat.  
  
Weirdly, halfway through, you can't bring yourself to get your bother on over a motherfucker breaking into your hive and inserting herself like a needle in your veins. It... isn't all that uncomfortable, this thing she's doing, and if she's so mixed up in the thinkpan, at least she's got her sponge scrambled in a good way.  
  
Then you recall the green blood under her claws and amend: at least in a way that isn't all that bad towards you. And anyway, you don't know that she done harm on any kid; lots of critters down on these shores, maybe she scared herself up something to eat, you can't go thinking accusations at someone just for a dab of color under the nails, else you'd have to cull half the painters on the planet, isn't that right?   
  
You can keep an eye on her here, and she can cook and watch your back and just be around.  
  
Motherfucking bare minimum, just being around. It's only your lusus what makes it out like it's some rare miracle, when every other troll you know has his or hers up in spitting distance all the time. You remember when your bro Karkat went and worked hisself up in a lather 'cause his lusus went off for a couple of nights, and you let him rant and complain and worry all at in your direction, but what you were really wanting was to grab him and shake him and yell at him to be motherfucking grateful that it's only just nights yet and not perigees, but you didn't have to say anything, Karkat caught on all on his own of his slip-up (smart motherfucker, so smart all the time, what the hell is the likes of him even bothering with you for?), and then he raged at himself and apologized and you couldn't be angry at your main bro anymore, and you didn't want him to be angry at himself either so you just pretended you didn't see any of his words and then he changed the subject and everything was fine again.  
  
But here you are, and if your lusus isn't around, then you'll make do with the one who is. You wish the old goat was at least around enough to see that you replaced him, get just a taste of a fraction of a  _crumb_  of the aching he's caused you, but for once that's all the reason you wish him around for.  
  
You realize you've been smiling at ghostlady for some time now and she's been smiling back. She looks happy just sitting there, looking at you, which the old goat never did, when you think about it and stop lying to yourself.  
  
“You got a name or summat?” you ask her.  
  
She freezes up like a husktop. Everything about her is blank and still, until her smile just starts slipping off, to be replaced by a look of mild incomprehension.  
  
“No,” she replies, then frowns, like her own answer confused her.  
  
“You gotta have a name,” you say. “You weren't always... you weren't... what did you get called when you were a wriggler?”  
  
“I don't... no, I don't have a name,” she insists. She hunches over and stares at a point just past your shoulder so intensely, that you look over. Nothing but wall. Whatever she's seeing though, it's painted large on the inside of her thinkpan and looming over her like imperial drones primed for the cull. “No name, no name, no need for a name, that's not what I'm supposed to do, I couldn't possibly have,” she whispers to herself.   
  
“Hey now, didn't mean to prod at you none, just weren't sure I wanted to keep calling you ghostlady,” you tell her.  
  
This time she looks at you. She's still far away, but at least she's seeing you.  
  
“No, no name,” she repeats.  
  
“No problem, I ain't all up for judging a motherfucker on things what matter none,” you say, and she seems satisfied with this answer. She returns to her cheerful demeanor very quickly.  
  
You eat some more, but you don't finish it all no matter how much she frowns and makes faces at you. Eventually she just puts it away and you go back to your respiteblock.  
  
You've got to bake yourself a pie. Your eyes feel dry no matter how many times you blink and your pan is pounding. A pie is everything you need to get yourself right again.  
  
But when you go up to your recuperacoon and poke your head in, you're surprised to discover that it is completely empty.  
  
Completely fucking empty.  
  
You take your head out and then you look in again. Guess you musta cleaned it out before you conked out? Or maybe she was changing the sopor and forgot about it before she filled the 'coon again.  
  
You turn around and discover her standing in the doorway, looking at you with an unreadable expression.  
  
“There ain't any sopor in here,” you point out.  
  
She bristles; her face twists into a mask of anger the likes of which sends nothing but bad feelings down your back.  
  
She is next to you in three long strides and grabs your face with both hands, bringing it up closer to hers until you're up on your tippy-toes and choking on your own terror.  
  
“No sopor,” she growls. “No sopor, never, ever again, none, no sopor ever. No sopor!”  
  
Then she releases you and you fall back against your recuperacoon. She must think the argument is over now, because she turns on her heel and leaves the block, and leaves you too, dumbfounded on the floor.


	7. Chapter 7

You press the Faygo bottle to your forehead. The condensation washes away your paint and the bottle comes away smeared in gray and white. Your head still feels overheated, like a log crackling on the fire, burning up, drying out, getting smaller...  
  
You're inside your empty recuperacoon, wedged in a corner. Your skin feels like it's burning too, but your innards feels like they're made of ice. The coolness of the Faygo bottle doesn't soothe. When you drink it, it feels too warm to quench your thirst.  
  
No sopor, she said. That's impossible, you thought at first. Everybody needs sopor. Everybody uses it. She can't cut you off completely, there must be sopor somewhere in the hive, hidden away until you need to sleep. You searched for it behind her back.   
  
She caught you doing it, sneaking up on you when you were picking through the trash. She didn't say anything, just pinned you with an accusatory glare. You ran back to your respiteblock and you've been here ever since.  
  
She brought you a Faygo at some point; cracked the door open and rolled the bottle in. You didn't hear it until the door was closed, but it feels like an apology, like maybe she thinks bribing you with sweet drinks is going to get you to feel a little sweeter towards her.  
  
You don't even fucking know anymore. She doesn't get it, she doesn't get why you started up on the sopor in the first place, doesn't understand how it dulls you on the inside and turn everything around you brighter and warmer and softer all at the same time. She doesn't know that it takes the sting out of all the bad things.  
  
She doesn't know that it makes you lose track of yourself and everything around you, how it makes those long stretches of time between the old goat's visits pass easier, pass almost unnoticed ( _almost_ , always  _almost_ ). Maybe she thinks that with her here you don't need to lose track anymore, but it's too soon, you can't let go of the sopor yet.  
  
Maybe later. Maybe you could beg her to let you have just a little bit of sopor for just a little bit longer. You know you could quit it eventually, when you don't have a reason to take it anymore, but not right now. It's too sudden. Just a little bit longer. You could look up at her and make yourself cute as a grub and ask really nice-like, and she won't be able to resist, she'll have to give in.  
  
But then, why do you need to ask  _her_  for permission? Isn't this your hive that you built block by motherfucking block? Isn't she the trespasser? If she's your lusus, where was she all those sweeps you spent waiting? How is she any better than the other one? Why should you do a damn thing she says?  
  
You want to bash her head in with this Faygo bottle. You want to bash her fucking head in, and see if her blood is just as white as her skin, or her tangled hair, or the scalding white light inside her thinkpan where a troll once lived before this caricature of a lusus took her place. You want to take her apart with your own claws, tear her open and dress in her entrails.  
  
You get so caught up in this train of thought, that it takes you a few seconds to identify the persistent dinging sound you keep hearing. It's coming from your husktop, which you only vaguely recall turning on.  
  
You jump out of your 'coon and stomp towards it with every intention of smashing the righteous shit out of it, but when you see the gray text on the screen, all your anger crumbles in on itself like a house of cards. Your legs feel like they're melting under you as you sit down, and for a few seconds, you just drink in the colors and the thoughts of your best friend, not even bothering to read anything.  
  
 **CG: WELL LOOK AT THIS, SOMEONE *FINALLY* DEIGNED TO GRACE US POOR PLEBES WITH HIS PRESENCE.  
CG: FUCKING HELL, GAMZEE, WOULD IT HAVE KILLED YOU TO PUT UP AN AWAY MESSAGE THESE PAST FEW NIGHTS?   
CG: “SORRY I'M NOT ON, TOO BUSY GUZZLING TASTELESS SUGAR WATER AND MAKING KARKAT SHIT AWAY HIS FUCKING SANITY WORRYING OVER MY UNWORTHY ASS, BRB”.  
CG: I DON'T KNOW WHY I WAS EVEN SPARING YOU A STRAY THOUGHT WHEN YOU WERE PROBABLY BUSY FORGETTING ANY OF US EXISTED THESE PAST FEW NIGHTS BY CHEMICALLY ASSAULTING YOUR OWN SPONGEMATTER AND STARING AT WALLS OR WHATEVER IT IS THAT SOPOR-ADDLED CLOWNS DO WHEN THEY DECIDE TO GO ON A TRIP.  
CG: IN FACT, I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT I'M EVEN DOING RIGHT NOW APART FROM SENDING POINTLESS MESSAGES INTO A VOID OF UNCARING AS VAST AND MERCILESS AS A HORRORTERROR'S PROTEIN CHUTE. YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY NOT ON, BECAUSE IF YOU WERE, YOU WOULD HAVE ALREADY CONTRIBUTED SOME HEADACHE-INDUCING CRINGEWORTHY INANITY TO WHAT I CAN ONLY LAUGHINGLY CALL OUR CONVERSATION.**  
 **TC: i'm here**  
 **CG: FUCK, YOU ARE. DID YOUR SHIFT KEY BREAK? IS YOUR HUSKTOP ACTING UP OR SOMETHING?**  
 **TC: EVERYTHING'S MOTHERFUCKING FINE.**  
 **CG: OKAY, COOL IT, ONLY ONE OF US GETS TO USE OBNOXIOUS SHOUTY TEXT, AND I ALREADY CALLED DIBS.**  
 **TC: no problem, bro.  
TC: NO MOTHERFUCKING PROBLEM :o)**  
 **CG: OKAY, WHAT EVEN IS THIS? NOT TO NITPICK, BECAUSE YOUR QUIRK WAS AWFUL ENOUGH TO SPONTENEOUSLY INDUCE ANEURYSMS IN ALL WHO DARED ALLOW THEIR SIGHTGLOBES FALL UPON IT, BUT IS THERE ANY REASON YOU DECIDED THAT THIS CAPS SEESAW WAS PREFERABLE?**  
  
You can't... you want to cry, a little. You're not sure. Or scream, but your mouth feels too dry no matter how much you drink. You want to tell Karkat everything. It's hard finding the words to explain the ghostlady, though, so you start with your most pressing problem.  
  
 **TC: there's no sopor.  
TC: NO MOTHERFUCKING SOPOR ANYWHICHWHERE.**  
 **CG: OH NO. NO NONONO. WHEN'S THE LAST TIME YOU HAD SOPOR?**  
 **TC: when's the last time we done spoke?**  
 **CG: ARE YOU SAYING YOU'VE BEEN OUT OF SOPOR FOR AT LEAST TWO NIGHTS NOW?**  
  
You stare at the text and read the line a few more times before you realize what Karkat is saying. You thought you spoke with him just the other night, but... you slept for a long time. Could it have been two nights? Could it have been two days that passed you by, and not just one?  
  
 **TC: I DON'T KNOW.  
TC: don't know a damn thing anymore. :o(**  
 **CG: LOOK, IT'S ALRIGHT, WE'LL FIX THIS.  
CG: THAT'S WHY I CALLED, I WAS GOING TO REMIND YOU TO GO FOR THE SUPPLY DROP AND PICK UP SOPOR.  
CG: I PROMISED, REMEMBER? I PROMISED I'D MAKE SURE YOU GO GET IT.**  
  
Now you do, yes. Everything comes in focus around that thought: you'll have sopor soon. Your best friend will get it for you, your best friend will fix this like he fixes everything, your best bro is made of  _miracles_ , pretty shiny miracles like broken glass shining in the moonlight...  
  
 **TC: HONK**  
 **CG: BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME SOONER, GAMZEE. YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT YOU DIDN'T HAVE ANY. I WOULD HAVE BROUGHT YOU SOME, I HAD ENOUGH TO SPARE.  
CG: DAMMIT, YOU FRUSTRATING CLOWN DOUCHE.  
CG: WHY DIDN'T YOU FUCKING ***TELL ME***?!  
CG: WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN DOING?**  
 **TC: honk  
TC: HONK**  
 **CG: DON'T YOU FUCKING HONK AT ME LIKE THAT ANSWERS ANYTHING. I'M GOING TO GET IT FOR YOU. YOU JUST SIT THERE ON YOUR ASS AND TRY NOT TO FAIL AT LIFE ANY MORE MISERABLY THAN YOU ALREADY DO.**  
  
No, no, wait, this isn't what you want. You don't want Karkat to go get it. This is wrong. This isn't...  
  
 **TC: seadwellers  
TC: SEADWELLERS, BRO. MOTHERFUCKERS'RE GONNA BE ALL OVER THE DROP POINT.**  
 **CG: I KNOW, YOU NOOKDIDDLER. I FUCKING KNOW THAT, ALRIGHT? I'LL STILL GET IT.**  
 **CG: STAY. PUT.**  
  
Karkat logs off while you're halfway through typing a message.   
  
This time there's nothing stopping you from smashing the husktop until the screen is a rainbow-hued spiderweb.


	8. Chapter 8

Your knuckles are bleeding, splattering indigo all over the desk and the floor and the husktop, but you're not even done reducing your husktop to splinters when the door to your respiteblock bounces open. Part of the frame comes off as well, and that wasn't even necessary, wasn't like you'd even locked it.  
  
The ghost barrels into the room and it takes her only a moment to look you over, notice your bleeding fists and the smashed device. She shrieks loud enough for the sound to go through your auricular clots like an icepick, and she's on you in a second, gripping your wrists and pulling you into her.  
  
She turns you around, clutches you to her chest still holding your wrists so your arms are crossed, and she's pulling you away while mewling in your ear, the same repetitive nonsense as ever, “No, no, don't, can't do that, don't do that, shh, shh, you're safe, you're safe” and it is getting on your  _last fucking nerve_.   
  
You kick blindly and you struggle and you curse up a storm, but this only makes her tighten around you.  
  
You feel the steady thrum of rage going up and down your spine like static electricity, and you feel it pool at the base of your horns. It tingles and it crackles, and then... It's not like a dam breaking, exactly. More like spending your whole life not knowing seeing is even a thing you can do and then opening your eyes one day and wondering why you never thought of it before.  
  
You see it starkly now, her mind laid out before you like someone picked up the top of her head. It's vile, it's slippery-wet and purple, soft and squishy on the fringes like a pie dropped in the water and left there to disintegrate crumb by crumb, except coming out between the squishy bits, there's something else, little white tendrils, as hard as steel, but raw and exposed, like the slightest touch will make them wake up and scream.  
  
You see all the pain you can cause in that moment, by pulling at one chord and unraveling the whole clump of tendrils at the bottom of her thinkpan, but you can't quite reach. Like a mountain looming in the distance, no matter how far you walk, you never get any closer to it. This isn't anything your chucklevoodoos can reach; she is barely troll anymore, but still a seadweller.  
  
This isn't the way out.  
  
You release and retreat, gathering up all of yourself back inside your own thinkpan. And then you set your feet against the edge of the desk and push.  
  
You were maybe aiming for a wall, wanting to make her hit something, but the only thing behind her is your recuperacoon, and that thing's too soft to hope it'll crack her skull. But it works out anyway. You hear the tell-tale crunch of plastic when she steps on a Faygo bottle. She falls over with you on top. There's a loud crack as her horns hit against the floor, and you know it hurts like a motherfucking wrecking ball to the head whenever horns make that sound, so it's probably why her grip loosens and you get to scramble to your feet.  
  
You go straight for the beachside door. You need to run and cut Karkat off. You need to get to the drop point first. You need to do  _something_.  
  
And the door won't open. You slam against it with your shoulder and try to force the handle, but it's well and truly stuck and you just  _know_ who's responsible for this, but you don't have time to deal with this shit. She's getting up on her feet.  
  
She's also screeching. One of her horns, though not very large or impressive to start with, is missing a chunk now diagonally, and she's tilting side to side, holding a hand to her head. You grab two of your clubs from next to the desk.  
  
You want to finish the job your floor started, but when she gathers herself to her full height, your feet get a completely different idea and the rest of you follows.  
  
You run out of the respiteblock, going for the other exit, the one inlandwards. But shit, what if that's one locked too? You skid off into a different hallway.   
  
This is the first time in your life you can ever remember thinking so clearly, and probably the time you'll need it most.   
  
So you run  _away_  from the exit.


	9. Chapter 9

There are always strange and hidden corners of a hive that only the wriggler who built it knows about: an odd angle between two blocks, a crawlspace, a half-built wall abandoned due to lack of material or lack of interest. False ceilings or dead-ends or floors slanted to give blocks deceptive proportions.   
  
There are more hiding spots in any wriggler's hive than there are corners, and any wriggler worth his hide keeps those spots secret, and doesn't let anybody step near them that they aren't involved with diamondways.  
  
You have spots like that too, and no matter how many holes the sopor bores into your thinkpan, this isn't knowledge what can leak out. You're the only one who knows it, you're the only one who  _can_  know it, but when you're as scared as you are, feeling every single one of your bloodpusher's thuds in your whole body, you feel like the walls can carry the noise and draw close the monster.  
  
She can't know, she didn't see you come in here, but you know she's searching for you. You heard her scratching at the walls earlier. It was happenstance, you're sure, she just wandered near your hiding place and missed it completely, because if she knew, she'd be dragging you out already.  
  
But you were still as a stone at the bottom of an ocean when you heard that noise. Thud, thud, thud, your bloodpusher kept going. Skrtch, skrtch, skrtch, through the wall. Even long after she went away and took her noises with her, you could still hear her like a counterpoint to your pulse: thud, thud, thud, skrtch, skrtch, skrtch. It takes a long time to be convinced that she is really gone.  
  
You still sit listening for a long time, and when you start believing that every moment of silence will be followed by another one, terror finally subsides to a simmering fear.  
  
But you still don't leave your hiding place. Instead you reach out with your chucklevoodoos. You do it slow, imagine the 'voodoos clinging to the walls, inching forward with each exhale in tiny waves. You don't want her to feel you and track you down, you just want to know where she is. You want to feel her footsteps and feel her hands on the walls and know that she isn't near.  
  
And she isn't. You can feel her like a beacon—she's spilling fear everywhere, stinking up the walls of your hive with it. It's fear that you're gone, that you're dead, that she can't find you... It's a lusus kind of fear, but coming from a troll, there's something base and disgusting about it.  
  
You see your opening. If you can reach the storage block down the hall, there's a window you can use to crawl out onto the beach.  
  
You open the door agonizingly slow and step out into the hallway. She's away, for now, somewhere on the next floor, and she's started moving furniture around. You can hear the screech of heavy things being dragged out of place. She's searching for your hiding spot.  
  
You time it so each time she makes a noise, you take another step, paranoid that she'll hear you otherwise. By the time you reach the door, you realize you've been holding your breath, and release it in a puff.   
  
Inside the storage block it's dark and musty. You have to trudge through a clutter of old toys and broken appliances. You reach the window, but when you do, you realize that it's not the kind that opens. You only put in those kinds of windows in blocks you planned to use regularly. The twelve windowlets are each set into the iron grid, and there's not a latch or a hinge to be seen.  
  
You could go out again, down the hall and go to the next block, but you don't dare. So you take out your clubs and...  
  
The windows shatter easily, spraying glass everywhere, and that's when the countdown starts. She heard that, she definitely did, and she's heading here as soon as she can identify where the noise came from.  
  
With increased desperation, you hit the frame over and over again, warping the metal, until you manage to dislodge the whole thing from the wall. You grab at it with both hands, despite the shards of glass still clinging to it, and remove it completely, shoving it outwards.  
  
You jump out the window. It's a short fall and a soft landing, even with all the broken glass, and in seconds you're scrambling to your feet and running. Your instinct is to run blindly in any direction available, but you think better of it. You round the hive and take the path towards the supply drop point.   
  
Part of you hopes Karkat hasn't reached it yet, but a different, more treacherous bit hopes that he's already there and waiting for you.  
  
*  
  
By the time you arrive to the beach where you know the supply drops usually happen, you realize that it's eerily still.   
  
There are a handful of seadweller and a couple of indigos who usually show up for the drops, few enough of you that splitting the supplies amongst yourselves rarely ends in bloodshed. The drops nearer the ocean are usually a great deal more plentiful than the ones inland, and even with the occasional blue or cerulean leading a daring raid, there's always more than enough to go around.   
  
Not all of you show up for all the drops, but you find it unbelievable that no one else would be here yet. Unless the drop wasn't today and Karkat was mistaken.  
  
In which case he ought to be relatively safe, oughtn't he? Even with seadwellers lurking, Karkat would be on his guard and not get in any scrape that isn't necessary. He's always careful about that kinda thing, and he's always telling you to be careful, too.  
  
You can sit here and wait—it's silly how you were worried you'd missed him, now that you think about it—and when he arrives, you're gonna go with him, and you're gonna be safe. Karkat'll keep you safe.  
  
Only you're not even through thinking that thought when the ring of voices rises above the sound of surf.  
  
There's nobody in sight, but there is an outcropping of rocks nearby, where the beach bends behind it at an angle, marking the mouth of a small gulf. Sometimes the supply drones miss the drop spot and the crates are left floating in the gulf for the seadwellers grab first, and those are the times your sopor tends to run low, because fighting seadwellers on water is a whole 'nother kettle of fish than fighting seadwellers on land.  
  
You listen closely. They're laughing, you think. One of them has a braying sort of laugh that echoes against the rocks. But there's something under the din of laughter, something you can just barely hear that...  
  
“JUST FUCKING TRY THAT AGAIN, TURDBREATH, WE'LL SEE HOW IT WORKS OUT FOR YOU THIS TIME!”  
  
A chill runs down your spine. You start running again, climb over the rocks, jump down on the other side.  
  
Karkat  _is_  here.


	10. Chapter 10

You take in the scene quickly. Karkat, on top of the floating container, sickle brandished. Two seadwellers on either side of the container, swimming in predatory circles around him. Another seadweller on the shore, harpoon gun loaded and aimed at Karkat, waiting to off him quickly as soon as the game loses its appeal. You've witnessed these things before, in endless variations, and they all tend to end the same way. But until now, you've never had anything at stake.  
  
You realize you only have one club; you dropped the other while you were making your escape through the window. You'll make it be enough. At least one of the seadwellers you can take by surprise.  
  
Karkat's the first to notice you, with his scared little eyes flicking all over, trying to see everything at once, and he turns his face away before the one carrying the harpoon gun can see the relief blossoming on his face. Probably wins you only two seconds, because one of the seadwellers in the water sees you just moments after that.  
  
“Oi, oi, it's the soporhead,” she yells when she recognizes you. Her giggles turn into a stunned gasp as you close the distance between you and the harpoon gun toting motherfucker.  
  
He's just getting around to turning his noggin your way when you're already right up next to him and you swing your club. You meant to hit him upside the head, but you get him in the side of the face and his temple crunches under your club so easily that it takes you aback.   
  
The female seadweller screams, angry and pained like she was the one to get hurt. Probably you just killed someone she cared for. Not just a friend, neither, 'cause you don't scream like that just for friends. A quadrant, maybe even a moirail that she witnessed you offing.  
  
Good, you think. Let her know what that pain's like. Let her know before you deliver your rightful judgment on her, because by the time you're through with her and her cohort, she'll think that pain was the sweetest caress compared to what you'll be making her feel.  
  
The two remaining seadwellers sink under the waves—she doesn't go as easily, the other one has to drag her under, but they both disappear from sight.   
  
You look at Karkat and he looks at you.  
  
You both know they're not really gone; they're not hiding or running away, they're just using their natural advantage against land dwellers. You know it because you've seen it before, and Karkat knows it because he's a smart motherfucker.  
  
You make for him, wading into the water.  
  
“Gamzee, stop!” Karkat yells, waving his sickle at you. “Don't do anything stupid, just stay there!”  
  
“Bro, you know I can't be doing that shit,” you reply. You're only just knee-deep in water and not really in danger yet, but you don't plan to sit on the shore with your thumbs up your nook, waiting for whatever disaster the enemies have planned, knowing that Karkat's going to get the brunt of it.  
  
Karkat looks angry, and he flails his sickle impotently in the air, punches the container. It's bright pink, meant to be seen from miles away, and it's about quarter the size of your respiteblock. It's not floating much, weighed down as it is, and water is lapping at Karkat's feet when he moves too much and makes it bob up and down. He needs to constantly balance himself to keep from going under, which would be the worst shit possible.  
  
Karkat can't swim. You can handle the water well enough to keep yourself from drowning, but you've practically got salt through your veins. Karkat's dry land, through and through. Karkat's solid and tough and immovable and made out of all those hard things that sink fast.  
  
“Just stay there, and I'll figure something out,” he growls, and looks around himself.  
  
You huff angrily and pace along the beach, trying to find a spot where the water's shallower, trying to find a sandbank that goes anywhere near Karkat.   
  
“Like you figured out how to get in the middle of the motherfucking ocean?” you yell back.  
  
“Hey, it was practically on the fucking beach when I got here, okay?!” Karkat retorts. “I just got on top to break the lock! I wasn't planning on a fucking career in the navy before the gill squad made an appearance and launched me off to sea.”  
  
You still pace, but when you make to go deeper in the water, Karkat gives a warning shout. You're about to disregard his explicit instrustions when there's a loud bang.  
  
The container starts tipping over. Even from here, you can see Karkat's eyes widen in panic as he scrambles to climb over the edge on the rising side and remain on top, but he slips and falls off.  
  
So you end up running in the water anyway, half-swimming and half-running, cursing as you try to reach Karkat.  
  
You see him rise above the water once, gasping for air and trying to grab onto the container, and then he's pulled under.  
  
You dive into the water, forgetting about your club. You swim as hard as you've ever swam. Never when you chased after your lusus, when you used to swim out into the water hoping to catch up with him, have you ever done it with such desperation driving you. It's probably a matter of seconds, but it feels like hours before you reach Karkat.  
  
You can see him feebly trying to ward off the two seadwellers with his sickle, but he's too slow, and bubbles rise from his mouth too many. You have no weapons anymore, but you fare better than Karkat. You sink your teeth into the neck of the remaining male seadweller, ripping out his gills.  
  
He kicks away from Karkat, opens his mouth in a soundless scream and swims away surrounded by clouds of purple. You can't see anything anymore, so it's a shock when you feel the claws scratching your shoulder and down your chest. Darker blood pours out of you, indigo mixing with the purple. You reach out, however, grab Karkat—you can tell it's him by the feel of his waterlogged sweater—and you pull him towards you.  
  
The last seadweller is holding onto his arm like a barnacle, and she scratches you again, down your arm. No shirt in the way this time, and the dark furrows down your forearm are deeper, letting out more blood.  
  
As much as she's not going to let Karkat go, you ain't gonna do that either. This doesn't work out so well for Karkat, who's probably in the middle of going about drowning right now, so you decide to speed things along.  
  
You grope down his arm and find his hand; he's still gripping his sickle. So you put your hand around his and guide it in a wide swing. The sickle makes contact with something. The water gets murky again, and you feel Karkat being released.  
  
You waste no time pulling him up to the container just above you. You already start feeling the pain in your chest from holding your breath so long, but you only need to go this little distance.  
  
And then you only need to grab onto the ledge of the container. And then you just need to pull yourself and Karkat so you're heads above water. You manage it, one step at a time and only as long as you don't think too much on how tired and aching you are all over.  
  
You cough and sputter and take in all the air around you. Your chest hurts even worse than underwater, but it's a good pain, it's a 'yes-you're-alive' pain, not the bad kind that you would be feeling around your bloodpusher if you weren't hearing Karkat cough along with you.  
  
You mean to climb on the container, pull Karkat up with you, but one arm's burning in pain and the other feels limp and spent right now, so you content yourself with holding on to Karkat as he holds on to the container.  
  
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, did she get you? Did she get you?” Karkat asks as soon as there's enough air in his body to work his windtubes. “Where are you bleeding? Gamzee, talk to me, you nooksucking, pan-defective, asinine piece of shit!”  
  
You want to laugh, but only give a short, breathless chortle. Your invertebrother is in good shape if he can muster a shout already. You don't think you can make even a whisper come out, so you just nod. You mean that you're okay, that you're alright, not dying, not even hurt that bad, but Karkat looks at you with horror. Cloudy black water surrounds the both of you, plumes of your blood that seep out with every beat of your bloodpusher.   
  
You get it now why they call that little bundle of meat so. You can see the blood getting pushed out through the holes you got poked in you. You might even appreciate the miracle a little, except for the fear it puts in Karkat's face and the pain it shoots through that side of your body.  
  
Karkat manages to haul himself up on the container, and then he puts his sickle back in his strifedeck and pulls you up by your good arm. You can barely help him along with this task. Just halfway up, you lose the last shreds of your strength and fall limply onto the surface. Karkat has to pull your legstubs out of the water, and he also has to lay you down on your back.  
  
He takes out his sickle again, this time to cut your shirt away. He swears and rants under his breath, angry words that only manage to sound worried coming out his talkflap. You didn't mean to cause him worry, but you like it that he's like that about you. He'd probably be milking his palegland dry over any of the motherfuckers he's decided to friend up with, but when it's just the two of you, you can at least feel like it's a special kind of worry in your case.  
  
You thought Karkat just wanted to get a better look at your bleeding bits, but by the sound of it he's cutting your T-shirt into strips. You feel him bandage your arm, and it makes the pain flare up. You probably make a noise, because Karkat stops for a bit and looks at you.  
  
“Is it too tight? Am I hurting you?” he asks, brisk and authoritive, but still with that edge of worry to his words, that poorly-hidden hint of  _caring_.  
  
“Salt's gonna do it good,” you say, because you remember that from somewhere... that salt stings because it's good medicine for wounds. Maybe Karkat told you that.  
  
He just snorts and goes back to bandaging.  
  
Your shoulder and chest would be trickier to bandage, but Karkat says it's all just shallow cuts, so he makes a wad of the remaining strips and presses it down on the scratches, says you'll just have to wait for the blood to clot, nothing to it.  
  
He sits down next to you, cradles your arm in his lap and holds a hand over the scratches on your chest. You don't feel like moving much, but he doesn't let you close your eyes.  
  
“Don't fall asleep, okay? You probably lost a lot of blood, and even if you didn't, you are not fucking sleeping when we could be surrounded by packs of hostile seadwellers on all sides for all we know.”  
  
“'M not gonna leave you alone,” you tell him, looking straight at him despite the disorienting dizziness that accompanies any attempt at moving your head.  
  
He looks embarrassed by this declaration, and looks away.  
  
“Yes, well, you couldn't if you wanted to, douchebag,” he says, a bit too loudly. “You're not going anywhere unless I get sick of your face and push your silly clown carcass overboard.” There's no sting to it, though.   
  
He chews on his lip and looks at you sideways after he says it. His face is soft with all sorts of feelings you feel yourself getting caught up in. He glows with sweet fears for you, and you can see all of them like the brightest beacon on a moonless night: they're all here spread out before you, real and close like you can take 'em in your hands and warm your palms with them.  
  
“Pale for you too,” you reply with a smile.  
  
He makes a choked sound.  
  
“Don't say that now,” he whispers, looking stricken. “Don't you dare fucking say that now, okay? I can't... I can't handle getting us out of this situation when I'm simultaneously terrified that one or both of us might not make it out, do you get that? Do you understand? Gamzee, look at me!”  
  
You nod. “Bigger stakes,” you croak. He sighs and nods too. He's relieved; he doesn't want you to think that he doesn't feel pale for you. It's a cold fear like a dark pebble rattling around in his spongecase, and you grab it, pull it out slowly and swallow it up for him. The way he sighs and his shoulders relax a bit, you know you did him a good. You want to reach up and pap his face, maybe ruffle his hair a bit, and you would, if you weren't so bone tired. But you're also happy just sitting here and looking at him, looking at you  _moirail_.  
  
Karkat stiffens suddenly, gripping your shoulder a bit too tightly.  
  
“What's that?” he asks, pointing with his chin in the distance.  
  
You have to tilt your head way back and look upside-down in that direction, but even so, you recognize the white form against the night sky.  
  
“Looks like the old goat's decided to drop in,” you mutter.


	11. Chapter 11

Karkat perks up at the news.  
  
“Your lusus? That's good, then,” he says, eyes fixed on the horizon. “He knows you're in trouble, right? He smelled your blood in the water, or... or tasted it, whatever, and he's coming to help.”  
  
You grunt. You used to believe that being a cynic is a dreadful thing, going through life like that, expecting the worst from everyone.   
  
But you really can't believe the best of your lusus anymore. The fact that Karkat believes... it's soothing, at least, to know that your moirail has that safety net intact, that he has... this easy assurance you haven't had in a long time. When he thinks of a lusus, the first thing that comes to mind is still  _safety._  
  
“Wouldn't be counting on him, bro,” you say.  
  
Karkat looks at you, unsure.  
  
“Come on, he's your lusus. No matter how crappy and half-assed of a job he does, he'd have to be pretty fucking defective not to get even the fundamentals right,” Karkat insists.  
  
You feel your lip curl in a grimace.   
  
“It can't be that bad,” he says faintly, and you can hear an echo to his words, 'I should have known it was this bad and done something about it'.  
  
“Ain't your fault,” you shrug awkwardly, and raise your good hand to cup his face. You rub your thumb over his cheekbone like you're wiping away tears only you can see, and it's true, sort of, you can see all the turmoil Karkat has going on inside and you reach out to soothe it. Your chucklevoodoos only need to brush up against the walls of his thinkpan to soak up all the fret and worry from him. “Shh. Wasn't ever your fault.”  
  
He leans into your touch, nuzzles your palm. You're not sure if he knows what you're doing to... _for_  him. Maybe he can't feel it, and he has no clue what's happening, so you pull back for now.  
  
“You don't actually know if he's coming or not, do you?” he asks almost in a whisper. “Gamzee...”  
  
It twists in your chest, the way he says it. You don't know if he figured that part on his own or if you left something behind in his head, but it hurts all the same.  
  
“We're gettin' pretty far from shore,” you point out, looking away from Karkat.  
  
Sure enough, the container gets just a little bit farther at sea with each little wave.  
  
“I don't see him anymore,” Karkat says, gesturing towards the open horizon.  
  
He breaks contact with you, crawls to the edge of the container for a better look, and you let your arm drop. It was getting pretty tired anyway, but you still miss the touch as soon as it's over.  
  
“Did he go under?”  
  
“Prob'ly.”  
  
“Is he coming back?”  
  
“Hn.”  
  
“Gamzee.”  
  
“Got no fucking clue, brother. C'mere.” You open your arm and beckon him closer. He'd fit like a dream up against your side, you'd bet your best pie tin on it.  
  
“Gamzee, we are not cuddling while in mortal danger,” he says sternly. “That is not a thing that is happening, either now or ever.”   
  
But you can tell his heart really isn't in the reprimand, so you just smile.  
  
He rolls his eyes at you and starts moving towards you--  
  
\--and then there's water splashing everywhere, and Karkat yelling, and arms around his neck.  
  
You jump, you're at his side in a split second and you grab his sweater, his arm, anything in reach.  
  
The seadweller's back. She sneers at you, long fangs on display like a promise. Like a threat.  
  
And then, she freezes. Her eyes pop out and she lets out half a choked scream before she disappears under the water.  
  
You and Karkat sit dumbfounded, staring at the spot where she was just moments before. There are bubbles coming up, and the water is purple with blood again. You can see little clouds of the stuff, blooming over and over.  
  
“What,” Karkat whispers, shaking with tension. “What the everloving right shameglobe of a horroterror just fucking happened here.”  
  
Your claws twist in his sweater, bring him close and crush him against you as you hyperventilate. The whole thing happened so fast, that you're still reeling to catch up, so you're just now experiencing the debilitating fear of losing your moirail. Karkat must be going through the same, because he's clinging to you just as hard.  
  
“I think... my lusus just saved us,” you whisper back, even though you're not sure why. You're safe now, your lusus is here, he'll protect you. He just saved your moirail. He just... “He just saved us, bro. You saw it, he did,” you continue, your terror subsiding into a nervous giddiness.  
  
He's your  _lusus_. You saw him come for you. Karkat was right, Karkat is always right, and you rub your face against his hair and laugh.  
  
It's really no surprise that you're so caught up in your celebratory rush of relief and pale intensity that you almost miss it completely when  _she_ surfaces.  
  
You feel Karkat stiffen as the ghost's arms reach out and scramble for purchase on the container, and it's almost as if you're watching in slow-motion when she appears: first her horns, then her tangled nest of rotting hair, then her intensely white eyes which are drawn to you immediately.  
  
But everything speeds up again as her gaze shifts over to Karkat. Her mouth twists, showing chipped canines. She heaves herself up on the container, and you realize that even crouched down as she is, she's still larger and scarier and stronger than Karkat.  
  
You shove him behind you.  
  
“Give me your sickle,” you whisper to Karkat urgently.  
  
“Is that a--”  
  
“Sickle, bro. Give it.”  
  
“Gamzee, why is there a ghost--”  
  
“Karkat--”  
  
She pulls her feet up, rises into an awkward bent-over posture that manages to make her half of the container sink until water laps at her feet. You push back against Karkat, move the both of you away as fast as a two-troll backwards crawl can take you.  
  
“Oh my god, what is it doing here,” Karkat keep babbling. “Why--”  
  
“Karkat--”  
  
She lumbers towards you unevenly.  
  
“Shit, shit, shit--”  
  
Karkat finally gives you the sickle--  
  
She raises her claws.  
  
You fumble with the weapon.  
  
And then there is a bang that you feel in your entire body. The container flips over, and you all tumble into the water, Karkat for the second time tonight.  
  
You hit the water so suddenly, that for a few disorienting seconds, you don't even know which way is up and which is down, and all you manage to do is flail, until you remember that you're holding a sharp pointy thing and that Karkat is nearby. You captchalogue the sickle and try to get your bearings.  
  
That's when you feel it, the great hulking mass brushing past you. The only thing you can see around you is white. You're confused until you spot the great eye peering at you, as big as your head.  
  
You freeze under that gaze. You also feel uncharacteristically meek, like how wrigglers must feel when their lusii catch them at something bad. You wonder if there's any possible way that he knows what's been happening, that he knows about the troll adult... You wonder if he's going to kill you for it.  
  
But it's only for a moment, and it passes you by as swiftly as your lusus. He opens his maw and in one almost elegant motion, chomps down on the ghost and crushes her body between rows and rows of merciless blunt teeth.  
  
She thrashes for a bit—you see her head thrown back and her jaw slack, you see her eyes wide and glassy, you see a claw extended towards you and twitching—and then she's no longer your concern.  
  
You grab Karkat as quickly as you can and swim towards the shore.  
  
By the time you have sand under your feet and Karkat coughing up half the ocean's waters by your side, you can no longer see any sign of the old goat.  
  
You try to scrounge up some gratitude, maybe a half-cup of good will towards your lusus. The only thing you manage is the vague feeling of having been cheated out of something.


	12. Chapter 12

You manage to space out all the way to Karkat's hive, so even when he herds you through the front door and you come face to face with an ill-tempered crabmonster, your destination still manages to come as a surprise to you.  
  
Pincers clack in front of your face, accompanied by a low chittering that even you know to interpret as displeasure.  
  
“Will you just fucking leave him alone? God, he's a mess already, I don't need you to finish the job of crushing him into fine misery paste,” Karkat yelled at his lusus, pushing you past him and towards the ablution block.  
  
“I'm going to get you some dry clothes,” Karkat informs you. “But you need a good scrubbing first, and some real bandages.”  
  
He turns on the water to fill the ablution trap and takes out some towels, all with a calm and deliberateness that almost makes you forget this is the troll who probably spent the whole night cycling through the various stages of fear.  
  
“Just strip and get in the trap, I'll try to find you something to wear that's dry and at least roughly your size,” he says. He offers you the stack of towels.  
  
Your thinkpan is trailing a few seconds behind you, though, and you don't fully process what's happening. You must be staring at the towels for a long time, because Karkat frowns, and reaches up to pap your face.   
  
Karkat, with his wet clothes hanging off him and his damp hair stringy over his eyes and his back bent over in exhaustion, looks at you with concern. You must really be a mess.  
  
“Hey,” he begins, but before he can utter another sound, you grab him and smother him against your chest. You bury your face in his hair, despite the unpleasant salty smell. Karkat lets the towels drop and coils his arms around you, holding just as tight.  
  
“No, no,” he says. “Gamzee, ablutions first,  _then_  nervous breakdown. We need to do this shit in order. Are you crying? Stop crying! I absolutely forbid any crying until I can get a pile together. This isn't proper protocol. Stop.”  
  
Oh. He's right, look at that, the wet miracles trailing down your face and into his hair. When he looks up at you, you can see that he's crying too. Translucent pinkish-red streams down his face. It's a bright and cheerful color, too happy to be making tears out of, and you touch it with the pads of your fingers.  
  
Karkat flinches, turns his head away. The way he inhales and tenses, you know he wasn't meaning to have you be seeing any of that. There's fear rolling off him, waves and waves of it, a deep, sickly fear that's been festering up inside him a long time. Even with all the holes the sopor's eroded through your head, you can still put two and two together, and this all adds up to  _mutant_.   
  
All this changes is that you know now Karkat needs you more than you ever thought he might. You don't let him go. You can't. If he goes now, he might never come back to you.  
  
So you latch onto him, whine into his hair. He flails a bit, before latching on to you in turn. He can't believe you'd still want him, you can feel it. The fear tapers off a bit, replaced with a numb incredulity, an expectation that things might still go wrong in ways he won't be anticipating. But you hush it, you smother that fear like covering a fire with sand. It's not what he needs to be feeling. It's not what any motherfucker you love so much  _ever_  needs to be feeling.  
  
“Come on, there's no need for this, you know at least the basics of how to wash yourself,” Karkat huffs after a while, his voice shaking. “Go and make friends with the ablution trap. You need it more than me right now.”  
  
“Can't jam with a motherfucking loofah, bro,” you reply.  
  
Karkat snorts, and then starts laughing. It wasn't that funny of a joke, but the hysteria in his voice is catching. You're both howling with laughter between tears, hanging onto each other as you slip to your knees on the ablution block floor.  
  
There's silence after that, comfortable silence even as you're cold and aching and tired to the bone.  
  
“Why'd he do that, palebro?” you ask after a while. “Why'd he motherfucking save me?”  
  
“He's your lusus,” he replies.  
  
“That ain't never up and counted for nothin' until now.”  
  
“Then maybe you were due.”  
  
You turn this answer in your head, but thoughts of caprine custodians turn to thoughts of shambling seadwellers, and it all blurs together; heartache, loneliness, unfamiliar affection and terror, all wrapped in white together until you don't understand anything that's happened to you.  
  
“Now will you get in the fucking ablution trap already?” Karkat grits out, all feigned-exasperation. You can tell; inside, he's just warm with pink happy-pale joy. “God, you're such a chore.”  
  
You chuckle, and put everything else away to sort out later. Karkat's going to help you do that. You don't need a lusus. You have someone watching out for you now.


End file.
